


expensive mistakes

by mondaycore



Series: the last of the real ones [2]
Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Alternate universe - Mafia, Blood, Knifeplay, M/M, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2020-10-24 15:47:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20708549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mondaycore/pseuds/mondaycore
Summary: They make a perverse mirror-image, facing off across the room. The red prince, the revenant.





	expensive mistakes

**Author's Note:**

> ‘tis i, monday again — i told myself i’d lay off writing for a bit to like, Actually Do Things, but i just couldn’t resist dropping a small token of my appreciation for singlemalter and the discord gang as thanks for being so enthusiastic, providing great feedback, and making this humble anon’s time here thus far so fun.
> 
> mafiaverse. technically a spinoff of [the last of the real ones](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20647280) but this works as a standalone. please mind the tags: content warning for violence implied and explicit, knives, blood, and all-around nastiness. title by fall out boy.

The look that flashes in Charles’ eyes when Max storms into his office is fleeting but damning. It vindicates Max’s seething fury and confirms his worst suspicions. It is the look of someone haunted, or _ hunted _, rather, by a specter thought to be banished, materializing again from the shadows.

“Max,” Charles says. “You’re back.”

“I’m _ alive _, you mean,” Max snarls.

They make a perverse mirror-image, facing off across the room. Charles in a suit cut to every line of his body, a tie in the crimson of his house livery, his hair combed back, gold glinting on his fingers and wrists and neck, smelling of expensive cologne. Max in his tac gear, the color on his clothes the color of blood, his hair matted down with sweat, a gun in his hand, reeking of gasoline and gunpowder. The red prince, the revenant.

“What happened?” Charles asks. Guileless now, doe-eyed, a viper coiled in a porcelain vase.

_ What happened _ was first an ambush, and then a massacre. A long stretch of darkness punctuated by flashes of blinding light and thunderous noise, the tattoo of gunfire, the pounding of his heart, scurrying and hiding like a fucking rat. Then, the realization — then the devouring rage of betrayal roaring to life, the red mist descending as he one at a time hunted down his attackers and killed them, his hands slippery and shaking, the taste of gunpowder coating his throat.

“You _ know _ what happened,” Max says. It’s a testament to the feat he’s accomplished that Charles doesn’t have an excuse ready, so certain he was that he wouldn’t need one.

Max limps across the room, advancing on Charles. His body aches dully and his leg’s fucked, somehow — he knows that once the adrenaline wears off, everything’s going to hurt like a motherbitch. But in the meantime, Charles capitulates, backing up slowly, putting himself against the wall.

“It was a good try, Charles,” Max murmurs in his ear, crowding in. He pushes the muzzle of his pistol under Charles’ jaw, tipping his head up, baring the line of his throat.

“I suppose you’re going to lecture me again about how I fucked up,” Charles says. Caught out, he discards the innocent act, easy as shedding a coat. He traces a finger down the barrel of the silencer jammed under his chin.

“I don’t think it’s a _ lecture _ you want,” Max says. “So I’ll just tell you this. If you try and kill someone. Make sure you fucking finish the job.”

Charles shifts beneath Max, a rasp of cloth, a streak of light. Max moves on sheer intuition, holsters his weapon and grabs Charles by the wrist, twists _ in _ and _ down _, drives the treacherous blade in Charles’ hand low and deep into Charles’ belly. 

Charles’ eyes widen a little. The blood that runs over Max’s fingers when he wrenches the knife out again brings back the past two hours and the unspeakable things he’d done. It turns him halfway back into that inhuman thing again. He wants to gut this boy._ He wants to eviscerate _ him. To dress him the purest shade of the color red, the ideal form of the color indifferent to everything but the carnal, slaughtering urge, to show Charles that the crimson he wears as emblem of his syndicate is nothing but a shadow of what the color really means.

Max cups his hands around Charles’ face and puts his mouth on Charles’ in an act that might be called a kiss, in the way that hatred might be called love. He drags the knife across Charles’ cheek, lacquering his pale skin with dark, shining blood. He replaces his mouth with the weapon and Charles parts his lips, his tongue against the flat of the blade, looking half-intoxicated, tipping his chin up and chasing it when Max pulls it away, his mouth defiled with red. Max doesn’t miss the way Charles presses his hips forward against his leg, against the weapon holstered on his thigh.

Max shows his teeth, a smile, a threat. It’s almost perverse how much Charles gets off on this, like a degenerate fucking junkie, like he can’t help but want this sick-in-the-head thrill. The rest of his existence must be so dull. So meaningless. A prince caged in his throne room, bearing the tedious weight of a faithless, backstabbing empire of _ nothing _ on his shoulders.

Max shoves back against Charles, giving him something to work with. The sensations are heady, almost luxurious — gabardine and silk sliding against Max’s skin, everywhere they touch blossoming with that rapturous arterial color, the once-pristine white of Charles’ shirt plastered to his skin and the dark fabric of his suit heavy and glossy with it, the air thick with the taste of copper.

Max lets Charles grind on him until his movements grow desperate, then pulls him down by the collar and bends him over the desk, his cheek against the polished wood. He cries out in pain, in ecstasy, same thing with him, really, as Max presses a hand against his wound, coating his fingers in the wet warmth. He snakes his hand down Charles’ pants and around his dick, skin on skin, slippery, obscene, and pushes his other hand into Charles’ belly again, a steady pressure — and that does it, pushes him over the edge with a long, shuddering moan.

Charles falls to his knees on the floor, pale and trembling, breathing shallow, his hand wrapped around his middle. The prince kneeling before the wolf at the door, a mocking sort of fealty. Max is not _ unaffected _ by the sight, he’s not _ blind _, but he’s sated, it’s enough. They match now, blood drawn for blood spilled, red curdling into black, his vengeance complete.

“Next time, Charles, remember what I said,” Max says. He leaves Charles there, bleeding out, and slips out into the night again, into the darkness where the red staining his clothes might be taken for nothing more than an errant shadow, falling in just the wrong way.

**Author's Note:**

> (john mulaney voice) hmm … gross! 
> 
> usual disclaimers apply here — this is entirely fictional; please do not get the real world or the real people involved in this, involved in this. singlemalter + gang, i hope you enjoyed this, hope everyone else did too, i’m off now to find jesus, thank you for reading bye!!!


End file.
